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DVD Rebuilder Pro Updates to Version 1.26.0 Posted by: jmet, 04:10, June 12, 2007             Viewed: 2082 Times Categories: Software News, DVD Authoring, Recording

Over the course of the past couple of years DVD archive techniques have changed dramatically. Newer "one click" programs have made archiving a DVD a fairly simple process... but there is a significant trade-off. The quality that can be attained by even the best of these programs is poor in comparison to original techniques that used Cinemacraft Encoder, TMPEGENC, or other top-notch encoders. The reason is simple. When using one of these encoders the picture is rebuilt from scratch and optimized for the resulting bitrate. One-touch transcoders usually drop DCT coefficients or change quantization info in order to lower the bitrate. This can result in pixelation and poor overall picture.

But, man, they sure are convenient.

That's where DVD ReBuilder (DVD-RB) comes in. This program was built to bridge the gap between the incredibly easy but limited "one-click" solutions and the incredibly complex but high-quality methods of DVD archiving.

Another advantage of DVD-RB when compared to older methods is that it doesn't require access to an expensive authoring package. DVD-RB includes its own reauthoring engine that reconstructs the DVD in a way compatible with its original design.

During beta development (software testing associated with this new product) the Pro version is only released to those who contribute to the development through donations of either their time (extensive testing and reporting) or a monetary donation. These "VIPs" receive regular automatic updates via e-mail as new versions of DVD-RB Pro are released. When DVD-RB Pro is released as a final product (version 1.00), VIPs who have donated at least $10.00 (or equivalent time and effort) will become members of the DVD Rebuilder charter team -- and will receive version updates for the life of the product. Those waiting until official release will be required to pay the $29.95 commercial price (happening very soon).

• Added a new MODE called "Enable Bitrate Redistribution." It should be considered to be in Beta status (meaning it's there for testing -- bugs are possible). This feature is especially useful on sources that were not optimally encoded (such as CBR or on-the-fly broadcast encoding. It will perform an initial first pass using the OPV feature of CCE SP, HC, QuEnc, or AutoQMatEnc to redistribute bits across all segments using a constant base Q value, before doing the standard encode. This mode may also improve picture quality on sources that use a less than perfect bitrate distribution on the original source. Results of the redistribution can be reviewed by reading "REDISTRIBUTION.TXT" in the D2VAVS directory after PREPARE.
• Added a hidden value for adjusting the size of the redistribution pass by setting the option "Redist_Percent=" in the "[Options]" section of the REBUILDER.INI file. The default value is 10.
• Corrected a bug related to the implementation of matrices when using OPV and CCE SP2.
• Updated several routines to better handle error conditions.
• Enhanced the OPV routines to better select Q values under certain specific conditions.
• Updated the multiplexing engine to better integrate audio when certain anomalies are encountered.
• Fixed a rarely occurring bug related to closed captioning.
• Other minor and cosmetic changes.